Using Your Company Culture to Attract and Retain Your Best Employees

(Editor’s Note: Michelle Randall is MIPRO’s Accountant, and is key to its operations. This is her first blog post. Give her a warm welcome!)

Can a term as shapeless and overused as company culture be a key in retaining your best employees? Can it compete with the two main pillars of pay and benefits?

Actually, yes. But you can’t give it lip service. You can’t say you’re a forward-looking employer of choice when you are stuck in the old mold of little to no motivation, no progressive thinking, no learning/development programs, no notion of using modern workforce management techniques.

But that’s where most companies are: at the lip service stage. And they never get past it.

If a company wants to keep its employee caliber high, it needs to “prove” every day it values its employees. This article over at Smart Business Online points out a great perspective on social media and “word traveling fast,” an angle that previous generations of HR management never had to think about:

The days of command and control are over. If you have an aging work force, you may still be able to function that way, but younger workers are not going to stay with that kind of employer. Also, employers can’t afford to have unhappy employees anymore. In today’s world of social media, word travels fast, and potential employees are more knowledgeable than ever about which companies are the best ones to work for.

It is definitely one thing to say you’re an employer of choice, but it’s another thing entirely to mean it. “Put your money where your mouth is” has never been more true. It’s not just a platitude you mete out at your convenience to sound good in press releases.

In the article it states that you can use money as an attractive carrot from a potential employee standpoint — but only to a certain extent. In our experience, this certainly rings true.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, we here at MIPRO began this company with the stated goal of exceeding expectations in the culture arena. We pride ourselves in being able to create a sound environment where there is no threshold that distinguishes between the W-2 employee and contractor; this is a significant advantage. We as a company treat our employees and contractors as equals, which, if you know services firms, is a rarity.

We have a communication style that is more start-up than big-box. Because of this, we’re far more agile than many. We get to the meat of discussions with our clients faster.

If you know us, a key part of the interview process is having lunch with us. No tricks, no gimmicks. Just sitting down for lunch and talking about anything and everything. We get to see how a person is away from the formal interview process, and the prospect gets to see our culture in full color. Veteran services employees know culture is very important, because a bad one can sting on many levels. Not a single employee or contractor gets hired here without a culture check — which runs both ways. It’s a true 360 degree exercise.

When you set out to have a great company culture, and your management backs it up every day, you get something special. If you talk to our clients, they’ll vouch for us. They’ll vouch that we are unlike any consulting company they’ve ever used.